The Tuscan's Revenge Wedding

by Jennifer Blake

  “My apologies,” Nicholas said, raking his fingers through his hair in a gesture of angry exasperation. “I ought to have realized the incident would be leaked.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You should not have been subjected to that, not now.”

  She gave a dismissive shake of her head. “Jonathan,” she said, speaking the thought uppermost in her mind, “when can I see him?”

  “Now, I believe,” he answered, and gestured down the hall where two white-coated physicians were coming to greet them.

  The preferential treatment was welcome, but Amanda barely registered it. In fact, it was almost expected after the way Italian customs had boarded the De Frenza plane for a private immigration check, also after they were whisked away in a waiting limo and chased by paparazzi. Her main concern was for her brother, and she was only grateful that introductions were brief before she and Nicholas were led toward his room.

  The two physicians strode at Nicholas’s side down gleaming, marble-floored corridors, speaking in rapid Italian while Nicholas fired questions, nodded at the answers and shot back more. Amanda hurried to keep up with them, running a few steps now and then. When she began to lag behind, Nicholas paused, swept a hard arm behind her back and set off again.

  “What is it?” she asked breathlessly as she tried to keep up. “What are they saying?”

  “You should learn Italian,” he said without slackening his pace.

  “I won’t be here that long,” she snapped back with some annoyance. “Is Jonathan all right? What are they telling you about him?”

  “It isn’t about him,” Nicholas answered with a bite in his voice, and turned back at once to the medical briefing.

  The news was about his sister, then. It didn’t appear to be good.

  Chill distress moved over Amanda. She wanted to offer comfort, but could think of nothing to say. She would be the last person he would want to hear it from anyway, as he blamed her brother for his sister’s critical condition. Without another word, she allowed herself to be led to Jonathan. She couldn’t get there fast enough to suit her.

  Her brother’s bed was surrounded by monitors and he lay in what appeared to be a tangle of tubing that ran into his veins. He was so still and pale under the sheet that it was difficult to be certain he was alive. Stitches made a black line across his right temple. Bandaging wrapped one shoulder and his chest, and his leg in its cast was propped on a foam support that looked far from comfortable. Gloom filled the small, square room, the only light coming from a long, dim fixture above the bed and a glimmer of dawn light through the window blinds.

  Amanda moved to take Jonathan’s lax hand, staring down at him for long moments. He looked so young, with his lashes resting on shadows as dark as bruises that lay beneath his eyes and all care smoothed from his brow. He might have been a boy again, as when she had rocked him to sleep. She lifted his hand to her lips for an instant, since that seemed the only place on his body that might not hurt. Releasing him, she drew up a chair and sat down beside the bed.

  She was alone. Nicholas had delivered her to this private room and then walked on with the doctors who escorted them. No doubt he was with his sister by now. She hoped he had found her in no worse shape than Jonathan.

  Would the Italian return for her later? She had no idea, but it didn’t matter. She was where she should be, where she needed to be.

  “Mandy?”

  She roused at that whisper, aware that she had closed her eyes while allowing her mind to drift, coming somehow to the moment on the plane when she had walked in on Nicholas de Frenza. Banishing it, she leaped to her feet and moved close to the bed.

  “You’re awake,” she said in husky greeting. “I thought they were keeping you sedated.”

  “Have been, I guess.” His lips formed a grin though he could not hold onto it. “Figured you’d come. Told Carita’s big bad brother so.”

  “So that’s how he knew where to look for me. I did wonder.”

  Jonathan grimaced. “Not happy with me. Don’t blame him. But Carita — have you seen her?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Ah, Mandy, they won’t let me. I’ve got to see her. Can’t you make them? Can’t you take me to her?”

  She glanced at his tubes and blinking monitors. “I don’t think that’s a good idea just now.”

  “That’s — what the nurse said.” He heaved a deep sigh, lifted a hand that was wrapped with tape and tubing, then let it fall again. “I pulled out my IV a couple hours ago, trying to get out of bed.”

  “Oh, Jonny.”

  “Fell flat on my face like an idiot. Such a commotion. Scared them, I guess.”

  Her heart twisted as she glanced again at his bandaged chest and the cast on his leg. She reached for his hand, gently smoothing the scraped knuckles of his fingers with the pad of her thumb. “I’m sure it did.”

  “Yeah. They were afraid of — of what Carita’s Nico would say, I think, since I was brought in with her.”

  Nico. It seemed to fit the macho Italian better than Nicholas, though she could not imagine calling him that herself.

  Pain twisted Jonathan’s pale, bruised face. “They tell you anything? About Carita, I mean? They won’t — won’t talk to me about her. They won’t let me see her. Not even for a minute.”

  Amanda swallowed on the lump in her throat as she recognized that her brother was rambling, repeating himself in his anxiety and maybe because of the sedatives he’d been given. She thought of the disturbing news Nicholas had apparently been told about the girl Jonathan obviously cared for so very much. She must choose her words with care. “I don’t think she’s awake yet.”

  “God, Mandy, it was awful out there on the road. She was so white, so still. She had so much blood in her hair.” He turned his head from side to side, squeezing Amanda’s hand. “I held her until the ambulance came. They made me let her go then, wouldn’t let me go with her.”

  “Don’t think about it,” she whispered, worried by his growing agitation.

  “I have to, don’t you see? I love her so much. She — she’s everything to me.”

  Carita de Frenza was everything to him, and the girl might not live. Could Jonathan stand losing another person he loved? Amanda could hardly bear thinking he might be forced to do it.

  “I’ll go and check on her for you, shall I?”

  “Please, if you would. Or if you can. Don’t let them put you off with a lot of bull, either. I have to know she’s all right.”

  The faintest wheeze of the pneumatic outer door was the only warning they had. An instant later, Nicholas spoke behind her.

  “My sister is still unconscious, if that is what you would ask. She may come out of it in a few hours, or it could be days or even weeks. Her concussion is severe, but there is no apparent brain damage and, so far, no dangerous swelling inside the skull.”

  Tears rose to shimmer in the dark pools of Jonathan’s eyes before he turned his head toward the window. His nostrils flared as he breathed deep in the effort of control. “Thanks,” he said in gruff gratitude, after a moment. “I’m so — so damn glad to know something. I thought maybe — maybe she didn’t make it and no one wanted to tell me.”

  “Carita is alive thus far.”

  Jonathan looked back up to Nicholas. “God, I’m so sorry. I should have made her wear her seatbelt, should never have—”

  “No, you should not,” Nicholas said with brutal precision. “Not if you refer to driving her off the road. If she dies, you will be prosecuted for vehicular homicide. I will see to it personally.”

  Amanda, watching blank incomprehension replace the unbearable anguish in her brother’s tear-wet eyes, felt hot fury explode inside her. Jonathan never cried, not for anything. Only the pain of his injuries and his fear for Carita brought him to it now.

  “Don’t!” she said, thrusting out her hand to clamp her fingers on Nicholas’s taut forearm. Meeting his scorching gaze as he swung toward her, she glared at hi
m with outraged warning. “Don’t you dare, not right now.”

  Nicholas’s eyes narrowed. The muscles of his arm hardened under her hand as if about to throw off her hold. His lips parted with a sound like the beginning of a growl.

  “Per favore!”

  That annoyed cry came from a pretty, dark-haired nurse as she rustled into the room. She continued in a spate of Italian that required no translation, obviously declaring her patient should not be harassed or upset. If they would continue their quarrel, she must ask them to leave.

  She smoothed Jonathan’s brow, studied his eyes, and popped a thermometer into his mouth. Swinging around, she stared in amazement at finding them still there, then made shooing motions with her hands.

  Amanda released her grasp, stepped back from Nicholas. She would have moved to Jonathan’s bedside again, but her way was blocked.

  “We will go for now,” Nicholas said. “We can return later.”

  “What? But we only just got here!” Amanda protested.

  “We trespass before normal visiting hours, should not be here at all. It will be some time before we are allowed in again.”

  “Surely if you ask—”

  “I have already used more influence than I should. Added to that, your brother is in pain, I think, and requires medication. It will be better if he rests now that his mind is somewhat at ease. You should rest also.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Mandy,” Jonathan spoke up as the thermometer was removed from his mouth. “I’m hard to scare. And I’m not sure how you got here so quickly, but you have to be tired from the trip.” He eyed with weary disfavor the hypodermic needle the nurse was unwrapping on the table beside his bed. “Anyway, Nico is right. Sister Maria is about to send me to la-la-land again.”

  She could not fight three against one. Amanda clenched her jaws together to prevent further objections. Leaning over the bed, she pressed a kiss to Jonathan’s forehead. “Take care of yourself, love,” she whispered.

  “Always,” he said, though his smile did not reach the desolation in his eyes.

  ~ ~ ~

  Amanda Davies was livid, Nico knew, and perhaps she had cause to direct her anger his way. He should not have threatened a man flat on his back and in pain from his injuries. Still, seeing Carita lying so waxen and motionless while surrounded by tubes, wires and monitors, knowing everything that reckless young fool had done to her, put him in a killing rage.

  The only thing that had snapped him out of it was recognizing that same anger burning in Amanda’s eyes.

  A woman who could become that infuriated, that fast, must carry a volcanic inferno of passion inside her. He’d thought so before but was doubly sure now. It just took a threat to someone she loved to expose it.

  He would give much to know what else might set it free.

  Nico thought she was calm and in control once more as they left her brother’s room and traversed the maze of corridors which would lead eventually to an entrance. He was startled when she came to an abrupt halt. As he turned toward her, she put her back to the nearest wall, sagging against it while she hugged herself as if in intolerable pain.

  He stepped close, caught her upper arm. “What is it? Are you ill?”

  She gave a swift shake of her head that sent the shining bell of her hair forward to conceal her face. She was shaking as if with cold, squeezing her arms harder around her waist as she eased away from him.

  “Come, we’ll get something hot and sweet to drink. A cappuccino, perhaps? Or tea?” This was some form of delayed reaction, he thought, a response to everything she had been through in the past hours.

  “Haven’t you done enough? Leave me alone.” She shifted away, tugging against his hold. He should let her go, he knew, but could not force his fingers to relax their grip. Stepping in front of her, blocking the view of a passing orderly, he reached for her other arm as well, caressing the slender muscles with his thumbs.

  “If you mean what I said just now to your brother, it wasn’t half of what I felt like telling him.”

  “What is the matter with you?” she demanded, flinging up her head so he caught the full blast of the contempt in the silvery gray of her eyes. “It isn’t as if he drove off a cliff on purpose.”

  “He should have slowed down. He didn’t know the road well, didn’t understand how tight the curves are just there. Besides—” He stopped, compressed his lips as he looked away down the hall to where a technician pushed a cart loaded with electronic equipment.

  “What?” She raised her hands between them so they rested on his chest as if she’d meant to push him away, but lacked the will to actually do it. “Your sister isn’t worse? I thought you said — But she is, isn’t she? Her doctors told you earlier.”

  He said nothing. It wasn’t simply that his brain had been short-circuited by her touch, though he could feel her every fingertip through the fabric of his shirt like tiny electric probes. No, some things were best kept within the family.

  She lowered her gaze, her face changing, becoming closed in and so somber it almost seemed she picked up his thought. “Forget I asked. It’s really none of my business.”

  It would very likely become her business, he reasoned while making circles with his thumbs, testing her resilient flesh under her jacket sleeve. It wasn’t as if the secret could be kept indefinitely. Amanda Davies could, in a few months, become a part of his family.

  With abrupt decision, he said, “Your brother did more than drive my sister off a cliff.” He met her gray gaze, lifted a shoulder in a fatalistic gesture. “She is pregnant. Carita is lying back there in a coma while his child grows inside her.”

  Amanda Davies drew a breath so swift and deep her breasts touched his chest. “You’re sure?”

  Outrage raced along his veins at this slur upon his sister’s honor, also on his own as the head of her family. “You dare suggest Carita is promiscuous? She is not quite twenty and has been well protected until now. She’s barely had time or opportunity for one lover, much less enough to cause doubt as to the father of her child.”

  Answering anger flashed in the eyes of the woman he held. “Then I pity her if she’s been as repressed as you make it sound. I meant nothing against her, nothing at all. I was only asking if her doctors are certain she’s pregnant.”

  “Repressed? My only care has been to keep her safe from playboys like your brother.”

  “Jonathan is no playboy! He’s only at loose ends.” Her anger faded as concern softened the gray of her eyes. “Oh, but — does he know?”

  “I have no idea.” Her distress was so clear to him that he almost pulled her into his arms to offer comfort, in spite of everything. The brush of her thighs against his as he stood so close urged it even more. She would not appreciate it, he was sure, and the effort it took to resist stoked his temper even as it tested his willpower.

  “Maybe that’s why he’s so frantic to see her,” she said with discovery in her voice. “He’s afraid they won’t care for her with that in mind. Or they will do something, give her something that may harm the baby.”

  “He can stop worrying,” Nico answered with finality. “The child will be a De Frenza. No one will dare do anything that might bring harm without my express permission.”

  She watched him while thoughts flickered in her eyes like lightning through a rain cloud. “It seems a miracle she didn’t miscarry. Are they quite sure she’s all right?”

  “Perfectly, according to the gynecologist called when tests revealed the danger. She may yet lose the baby, but every hour that passes makes it less likely.”

  “No wonder her doctors were in a stir. They must have been terrified to tell you.”

  He gave her a scowl. “I am not such an ogre.”

  “Just a man who expects everything to go according to his exact wish,” she said, an ironic twist of her lips that made him long to put them to better use. “But what if Carita needs all her strength to recover? What will happen if—”

  “If she cannot
live unless the baby is aborted?”

  The woman he held flinched at his plain speaking, or perhaps the harshness in his voice. Still, she tipped her head in assent.

  “I am head of my family and bound by honor and duty to do what is best for every member,” he answered in grim precision. “This decision, if it must come, will fall to me. I pray I am not forced to make it.”

  “You are the head? Not your father?”

  “He died of a heart attack a decade ago.”

  “And your mother, Carita’s mother?”

  “Gone as well. She left us a month after Carita and Carisa were born, but succumbed to breast cancer a few years later.”

  Amanda gave a small, sympathetic shake of her head. Seconds later, her eyes widened as the implication in the similar names and timing of the births reached her. “Carita is a twin?”

  “As you say, though not identical. Carisa is—” He stopped in an abrupt return to discretion. Amanda would discover the difference soon enough.

  “That’s why you were so furious with Jonathan just now,” she said slowly, “because what he has done may require you to make a decision about which will live, your sister or her baby.”

  She understood him a little too well for comfort, he thought. He met her eyes with hard intensity, and when he spoke his voice carried the iron of ancient tradition. “That is why I would like to kill him. That’s why I may well kill him if Carita does not live.”

  “You can’t mean it.”

  Down the hall, the young dark-haired nurse walked out of Davies’s room and turned to give them an indignant stare. Nicholas made no answer to Amanda Davies’s protest, but released her with an abrupt, open-handed gesture and stepped back. Inclining his head, he indicated that she should precede him along the corridor.

  ~ ~ ~

  He didn’t, couldn’t intend what he’d said, Amanda told herself as she walked beside Nicholas. He was a sophisticated, modern businessman fully integrated into the electronic world. His threat against Jonathan was a figure of speech, not a vow based on some old-fashioned idea of vengeance for a wrong.

  And yet something in his voice left her cold and aching inside. The look on his face made her wary of being anywhere near him.